Stealing from Workers and the Poor - The Class War Economy

Call it the class war economy--a shocking transfer of wealth out of the pockets of working people and the poor and into the overstuffed bank accounts of the super-rich.

Rising profits and a smart 4.3 percent annual growth rate in third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) are happening side-by-side with falling wages, sinking family income, evaporating pensions and a failing health-care system.

This is the face of the real "new economy" in Bush's America. It comes without the bubble of the late 1990s economic boom and Bill Clinton's political salesmanship in the White House. Back then, mainstream economists marveled at rapid growth and low unemployment as evidence of a technology-driven "miracle economy," with profit rates peaking at levels not seen since the 1960s.

In that long boom following the Second Word War, steady economic growth and rising productivity allowed for regular increases in real wages and a rising standard of living for most workers--giving rise to the belief in an "American Dream."

By contrast, the 1990s boom was very different for working people. The rise in family income came not from increases in wages, but mostly from growing numbers of women working--and more hours on the job for all wage earners.

Today, however, family income can't compensate for the decline in wages since the recession. According to an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis of the latest available figures, pre-tax income for married-couple families with children fell by 3.1 percent between 2000 and 2003.

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